"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
He might have been an uncle, Kathy thought, or a schoolmaster, a big benign bear of a man in a slightly rumpled suit, grey beard and hair in need of a trim, as unlike the hard young man of Serious Crime as can be and therefore dangerous in a different way.In this fourth book, Brock and Kolla have been called to a shop dealing in rare stamps on the assumption they'll be handling a simple case of theft. But a man from Brock's past, Chinese East End ex-villain Sammy Starling, comes to him for help when Starling's vivacious young wife is kidnapped. The ransom notes are decorated with the rare and priceless Chalon Head stamps of the young Queen Victoria and the duo begins to make connections. Sammy believes a bent police officer is behind the kidnapping and soon the reader is plunged into a lively and complex narrative that covers issues of corruption in the Force, the difficulties faced by the police when dealing with a deeply unhelpful public and even questions involving the very nature of good and evil.
Maitland has been quietly reinventing the genre of the police procedural and creating something quirkier and more carefully crafted than most entries in the field. This latest novel is perhaps the best plotted yet, with dialogue still a strong suit:
"You've got to remember what it was like then, Kathy. In 1960 there were no more than two or three hundred drug addicts known to the Home Office in the whole of England and Wales. Think of that! Today there's probably more than that in Budleigh Salterton. And those addicts were mostly old folks who had become dependent on their painkillers. Ten years later, there were thousands, almost all under the age of 30."--Barry Forshaw
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. Seller Inventory # ABE-1703297348298
Book Description Seller Inventory # hc68-10
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.58. Seller Inventory # Q-1559705701